Ghosts and Demons
by ristiki
Summary: Sherlock fell and John is dead inside, Sherlock comes to say hi, and then they both will say goodbye. This is very angsty. You may cry. One chapter. Late-night writing. Bad summary. Rated T for violence.


"Don't be dead!" He screamed, writhing about under the sheets that once belonged to his flatmate. He woke with a start and his eyes were peeled, looking around the room to make sure he was home. _Home_. He thought, almost in a tearful manner. He got up and wiped the sleep from his eyes. "It's still dark, Sherlock." He said, almost wishing that Sherlock could hear him. "I know, John." Replied a deep, familiar voice. John turned on his heel in the very same second. In the hallway, looming into the doorway, the light from the hall shining behind him, Sherlock stood gazing at John. John went from depressed to ecstatic in two seconds flat, taking in the sight of his long-missing flatmate. He noticed everything about the man from the top of his springy black curls to the tips of his leather shoes, but he missed one thing; Sherlock Holmes had no shadow.

John ran over to Sherlock, ready to embrace him wholeheartedly, but Sherlock cut him off short. "John, you can't make contact with me." John stopped in his tracks, looking Sherlock in the eye suspiciously, just as he used to a few years back. Sherlock remained in the doorway, his face tense. John's face fell, "What is it now, Sherlock? Are you just a dream?" John sounded so serious, so sad, and that's why Sherlock made an attempt to tell the truth. "Yes, John. I am a dream of sorts. What I am, I used to not consider real, but now that I am it, I have to believe." He said with a sigh, his lean shoulders caving inward. "Sherlock, no. That's impossible." John claimed, his eyes widening as he saw the pale look of Sherlock's body and clothes. "Tell me it's a lie" he said, but all Sherlock did was stare, for once, he had nothing to say.

"I find it odd that you have always believed in me, always done what I said no matter the cost. Why would you do that for me?" Sherlock asked, his head low, not being able to look John in the eye. John looked at Sherlock as though he had just been stabbed. "Please tell me you are joking, Sherlock. You must know why I always put up with your complete bull all the time. You must. A guy like you, with the knowledge you have…" John stumbled over his words as Sherlock looked up at him, innocence bleeding through his every pore. "You forget that I deleted feelings back then. You forget that I didn't care if people died. You forget that I was a cruel man, disguised as a hero, which I told you time after time I am not. You forget everything I am and you are ashamed that I don't remember the reason you were so good to me?"

"Sherlock, I'm sorry." John said, stooping to the floor and sitting cross-legged like a preschool child. Sherlock looked down at John and modeled his position across from him on the carpeted floor of 221b Baker Street. "Sherlock, I believe in you because you were the one person that did not hide any truth from anyone. You told everyone what was needed to be told and more. You gave your heart and soul to the truth while everyone else gave theirs to the comfort of lies. I believe in you because it would be wrong not to. I did everything you asked and ordered because it made me feel needed and wanted, Sherlock, a feeling I hadn't had since I exited the war. You made me feel _alive, _and you still do, even now, even as you are."

"Oh John, I have missed you so much. I have never missed anything or anyone this much in my whole life. You say I am truthful and if I am, I have to tell you how I got here." Sherlock said with a shaky exhale. John nodded his head and let Sherlock compose himself before he began speaking.

"It was three years ago and I was on the rooftop at St. Bart's with Jim. He was telling me you and my other friends' lives were at stake if I did not jump from the building. I knew he was the second option to save you all, and he knew I knew, so he shot himself before me. He took his own life to make me play the game he had been setting up for so long. After that, I called you and lied to you for the first time in your life. I jumped from the top of St. Bart's feeling the wind under my coat, lifting me and speeding me to my awaiting impact all at once. I remember your eyes and you scream, John. Then I remember blackness. You have been thinking I am alive, and I am. I am alive because of you. You see, after the impact of the fall, I was send to the Deciding Hall. It is between earth and the Sun. I waited here for a few months, not needing food or water, but feeling emptiness all the same, an emptiness I was sure was caused by the Torments of the place, like demons, but more secretive and seemingly civil." He cleared his throat and continued, "After the wait, I was greeted by a Torment I had gotten to know pretty well. It told me the Boss was ready to speak with me and I went down the glowing green path designed for my feet alone to his Office. The Boss ordered me to an eternity in Hell or however long I wished to be here on earth, and then transferring after at least four years to the Middleground or at least twenty years and to Heaven. I of course chose to come here, thinking four years would be nothing. I was not planning on seeing you, John, but it has been over two years of my being here and everything reminds me of you. All of the faces, the sidewalks, the storefronts, everything. Everything on earth ties to you. I had to come and see you. I'm so sorry I came here." Sherlock said, starting to lose it at the end. His body was shaking and he was breathing heavily, painfully.

John processed all that Sherlock had said and had one big question, a question he knew the answer to, but had to ask aloud. "You're dead? You're really dead, Sherlock?" he asked. Sherlock wiped his eyes and met John's. He nodded his head and John let it sink in. "Damnit Sherlock! NO! I have been waiting for _years _for you to come home, not to have it end up like this! You can't be dead! This can't be happening!" John screamed, not caring if Mrs. Hudson heard. Sherlock looked up, even sadder than before, "I knew I shouldn't have come. I am sorry, John." John did not listen, he shot up from the floor and took went to his nightstand, taking out a splintered wooden box. "What are you doing, John?" Sherlock asked, peering at him wearily from the doorway, truly unaware of John's intentions.

"Sherlock, when you died, I was very upset. I was hazardous to my own health." John rolled up the cuffs of his nightshirt, displaying the array of cuts all the way up his arms. Sherlock took in a deep breath, "John" he whispered. "Oh that's not all, Sherlock." John then began to unbutton his nightshirt, revealing a name etched deep upon his skin, a name he would never forget, a name he bled for in hopes that he would die over. Engraved upon John's torso was the name _Sherlock Holmes_. John looked down at his work, his eyes glimmering fondly in the faint light of the peeking dawn just before he began to explain about the box. Sherlock's eyes were burning as he felt tears sting at his corneas, but he did not dare cry, knowing the tears would put John in a worse state than he was already in.

"Anyways, John said, not bothering to put his shirt back over his shoulders, "This box is what I was left with. They took all of my kitchen utensils. They took my registered gun. They even took your collectable weapons, the only things I fought to keep. This art set is all they left me with. They didn't even know it was the source of my only happiness; my pain. You see, this top section his pastels, paints, and pencils, but underneath lies the real fun…" John murmured, lost in his own world as he lifted the lid to reveal a variety of rusted and shiny new exact-o-knives beneath the surface. Sherlock counted about seven rusted blades and saw many more clean ones, ready for what he knew John was planning on detailing. "These are my only source of happiness, since you died. I have been scratching at my scalp, bleeding in the shower, hiding the evidence easily from snoopy Mrs. Hudson, the Dear. Nobody has known for the past few years and I only take so much blood before I get lightheaded. The lightheaded feeling of blood loss is what makes me happy because the sensation's distraction makes me forget about you." John looked to his blades with kind eyes, the kind he used to give people versus weapons and blades.

"John please," Sherlock begged, a tear streaking his cheek, "please don't hurt yourself. I'm here. I am going to stay. I don't need to go to the Middleground or even Heaven, not unless I am with you, I'll wait with you. I will. Please, just stop…" Sherlock sobbed for the first time John had ever seen, unaware that Sherlock frequently did so up in his far away Mind Palace all the time as a child and teenager.

John looked touched, but he couldn't care anymore. All he as seeing hearing were the empty words of the shell that was left of the one he loved so deeply. "No, Sherlock. You did this. You must see the price of your decision." John said coldly. He took out the exact-o-knife that shined brightest in the glint of early morning light and brought it near his wrist. Sherlock looked up and could not stand to see what was to happen next. He quickly got to his feet, shoving the box of knives upon the floor with a loud clatter and grabbed the back of John's neck, pulling John up to meet his face and planted a kiss up his mouth.

John faltered and dropped his blade. His brows knitted together and he felt Sherlock's clumsy lips upon his own. Sherlock ripped his lips from John's and John released a weak whine. Sherlock ducked back down just as John reached his arm back up to grab at Sherlock's silky mane. John's lips were then the ones to crash upon Sherlock's. John dipped his tongue into Sherlock's mouth, Sherlock finally being the one to comply with John's order. John took control and snogged the every breath out of Sherlock, giving him no chance to say a word, silencing his urgent moans at every chance with his lips.

When John finally let Sherlock go, he looked into Sherlock's eyes and saw them flashing from brilliant blue to straight black. "John," Sherlock said, in a voice of emptiness and pain, his teeth flashing brilliantly sharp. John felt the inside of his mouth for cuts and discovered there were many that has started to bleed. Blood dripped down his lips onto the white sheets. John was scared. "John," Sherlock took in a deep breath, inhuman in sound, "I told you not to touch me. I am not who you think I am anymore. I made a deal with the Boss. I said if I touched a mortal in my time on earth, he could turn me into whatever he pleased; he has turned me into a demon."

John looked at Sherlock, trying to find the blue eyes and the tears and the truth and all he saw was the latter; Sherlock was a demon. Suddenly, Sherlock lost any shine in his eyes and his breathe resembled nothing human at all. "Sherlock, I'm sorry!" John screamed, not knowing what he was sorry for. He knew he was sorry for one thing, becoming Sherlock's flatmate, making him kill himself and become a demon in the end. He was sorry for ever being born, in fact. "Too late." The one who was just Sherlock said in a deep, raspy voice that sounded like a metal record playing backward.

The demon pinned John to the bed and drug his teeth down John's torso, leaving gashes so deep the white of John's ribcage was exposed. John screamed bloody murder, begging for mercy. "No more Sherlock? No more JOHN." The demon said sadistically, biting everywhere upon John's body, leaving him bleeding to death upon his bed.

John could feel the life seeping from his body, his limbs burning, freezing and numbing all at once. Blood filled his vision as it dripped down his face and scalp. He had seconds left to live and in those last seconds, he saw Sherlock, as he had transformed into his ghost once again. Sherlock looked dead, truly dead at the sight of John. "WHAT HAVE I DONE." He screamed. John smiled, his lip half missing from the recent attack, and whispered, "I deserved it." Just as he breathed his last cold, shaky breath, all of the blood in his blood in his body finally dripping away.

Sherlock then looked over at the ripped jigsaw of bones, blood, flesh, and fibers that was once his John and shut his eyes over the earth for eternity, giving himself the tortures of hell for what he had done and still feeling he would never experience enough pain to make up for murdering and tearing away at the only one he had truly loved.

At least John went to heaven, being wiped of his memories of the horrid ways Sherlock kept up and every memory they had ever made, or so Sherlock thought.

_Fin_


End file.
